Volume One, Chapter Twelve: Prelude to the Mission

The flying squirrel sat on the bench, watching the informant’s Honda motorcycle speed away.

He picked up the beer the informant had opened, crossed his legs and said, “This Old Dao Bo is truly cautious.”

This informant was none other than Yan Nuo’s strategist, Old Dao Bo.

Perhaps out of caution, Old Dao Bo hadn’t taken a single sip of the beer offered by the flying squirrel. Instead, he drank only the beer he opened himself.

The flying squirrel hadn’t detected any signs of lying from Dao Bo, but that didn’t mean he could trust him.

It was certainly abnormal.

He couldn’t believe a lie could escape his eyes, yet Dao Bo’s reasons for becoming an informant were not convincing. And when they spoke of the death of the lone wolf, why did Dao Bo clench the beer bottle cap so tightly in his right hand, leaving a blood-red mark in his palm when he finally opened it?

The flying squirrel finished his beer in one gulp, then got in his vehicle and drove away.

He found the inn in town called “Mao Han,” parking his truck right at the entrance. Holding the shabby woven bag, he walked to the front desk. The plump girl behind the counter was clearly from the Han ethnic group, listlessly muttering a greeting, obviously uninterested in doing business.

These country folk, coming to the city to make a living, would eventually spend their earnings on drugs. The man before her was thin and dark-skinned—likely an addict.

But since he’d come in, she had to receive him, though reluctantly. “Did you bring your ID card?”

The flying squirrel rummaged in his trouser pocket but found nothing. The girl looked at him with disdain as he flushed with embarrassment—many locals didn’t have ID cards.

She had no choice but to open the registration book, mechanically asking, “Name? Address?”

He mumbled in Mandarin, handing over a fifty-cent note. The girl caught a hint of his pronunciation and randomly wrote a name in the register. She stared at the scrawled “Zhexiang Farm, Team Five” on the note—he wasn’t a local, but he was certainly a genuine farm country Han.

She held out the register to him: “Put your fingerprint here.”

The flying squirrel took the book, dabbed his thumb on the ink pad, and pressed his print while quickly scanning the pages. On the open page he saw that in the past three days, only one guest had stayed. He vaguely remembered these days were Water Splash Festival, but each region celebrated on different days, so people probably stayed in their villages for the festivities.

Mao Han Inn was state-owned—expensive, with poor facilities and service. Even outside of holidays, few people stayed here. The privately run inns cost half as much and were no worse.

The flying squirrel meekly requested a room on the second floor. He knew the second floor had been added later, with a narrow corridor and five rooms, each accommodating four people. He paid forty yuan, informing the girl that a few fellow villagers would arrive later, and asked for the two innermost rooms upstairs.

The rooms were oblong, and the corridor was long and narrow.

The side facing the street was a rough cement wall, apparently built to protect some secret inside the corridor. There were no windows, and with the lights off, the corridor was dim even during the day—exactly the environment he needed.

He skillfully found the light cord and couldn’t help but smile. He knew that all the second-floor and stairway corner light switches in town inexplicably hung in the middle of the upstairs corridor.

He entered a room with two bunk beds, took an old plastic bag belonging to a shepherd from his woven sack and tossed it on the floor, then removed his tracksuit. He pulled out an old soldier’s uniform, faded and never bearing insignia, a pair of blue trousers, and a pair of worn liberation shoes, placing them on the bed. At the bottom of the sack, he retrieved two packs of cigarettes in plain white boxes—popular packaging in the Southwest, commonly sold in tobacco shops at the farmer’s market, the boxes sealed.

He opened a box and poured the cigarettes onto the bed. Each box contained only three real cigarettes, meant to be offered when needed. The remaining seventeen were filled with powerful special explosives. He took out six real cigarettes, then carefully slipped the box under his pillow.

Finally, he pulled out two lengths of soft wire picked up on the road; the woven sack had now fulfilled its purpose, empty.

Before entering the inn, he had called Beijing from a public phone on the street. “Crow” would notify the other three of his arrival in Mang City. One of them, for their own interests, would tip off Yan Nuo; thus, the secret would lose its meaning.

He pondered uneasily—who would betray him?

An hour later, the flying squirrel left his room, drove the small truck to a nearby hill, parked on the far side, and dug a shallow hole in the soft yellow earth, burying the plastic bag filled with old clothes.

Now he wore an old two-pocket uniform, blue trousers obviously a size too short, old rubber shoes, with a face as dark and thin as the locals, a pair of cheap glasses bought at a street stall, and his fingernails packed with black-yellow mud. Anyone could see he was a scruffy country laborer come to town for work. Walking through Mang City’s dilapidated streets, no one would give him a second glance.

His only flaw was his height, so he hunched his shoulders and bent his knees slightly, appearing five centimeters shorter.

He returned to the street, confirmed he wasn’t followed, then ducked into a roadside stationery shop, buying a roll of packing tape and four boxes of thumbtacks, asking the owner for two extra small plastic bags.

Before passing through the checkpoint, he’d left his electronic watch on the Santana and let it slip into the reservoir—if the guards found his old uniform, the electronic watch would give him away. Now, seeing the stationery shop sold digital watches, he spent fifteen yuan on a supposedly waterproof LCD watch. He’d need to measure time accurately in the coming days.

He wandered the streets aimlessly for a while, finally finding a fishing tackle shop. At several reservoirs in Mang City, many people spent their days fishing. He entered and browsed—there were sun hats, masks, waterproof gloves, and the rest were bait and gear. He picked up a telescopic rod, estimated its size, then put it back.

He knew the two-story bamboo house where Yu Wen’er lived was surrounded by giant bamboo.

The flying squirrel woke the fat boss napping on a bamboo chair in a white undershirt, handing him a plastic bag containing three hundred of the largest fishing hooks and ten reels of one hundred meters of fishing line. No customer had ever bought so much; after calculating with the calculator, the flying squirrel handed over three hundred yuan, then an extra fifty yuan, saying, “I’m paying extra. Please give me a sheet of paper so I can sketch a diagram. I want you to bundle it as I request; I’ll pick it up later.”

The fat boss examined the sketch—drawn in pencil, it showed two thirty-centimeter wooden rods, with three lengths of fishing line fixing the three hundred hooks in place. He couldn’t tell what the poor man was up to, nor what use such a crude device could have. He looked at the money, suspiciously eyeing the customer. “Ten yuan is enough for the work, no need for more.”

The flying squirrel sighed, speaking softly: “Ah, the fifty yuan isn’t for labor, it’s hush money. If you take it, you mustn’t tell anyone you saw me.” He glanced outside; the boss saw the fierce light in his eyes. “Don’t judge by appearances. If I told you what this device is for, it’d frighten you silly. Loose lips are bad for me—and worse for you.”

The boss understood—he was dealing with a bandit.

Everything was proceeding as planned, and hunger struck again. Saro’s rice noodles never truly filled him.

Now, deep in the enemy’s lair, no matter how well disguised, he dared not draw attention. He bought some food from a grocery store and returned to his room at the inn. The plump girl at the front desk was chatting away on the phone, her eyes flicking to him as he humbly slipped into the corridor.

He took out the newly bought food from the white plastic bag, put the instant noodles into a slightly rusty enamel mug, filled it with hot water from the thermos, opened a small packet of “Fuling pickled mustard” and a can of “Yingzhou Factory Black Bean Sardines,” and poured two-yuan rice wine into his mouth.

This “lunch” was simple and tasty, balanced and nutritious. Soon he would undertake something no different from murder and robbery; he might even end up wounded and bleeding. He dared not neglect replenishing his energy.